@Bill Boggs They always talk about "time healing". I still hurt after 52 years, and know how you feel. Frank
Remember fish Friday's. That's what I'm having for lunch today. Baked fresh water crappie, a delious white meat fish recently caught in the little lake outside Eastland, TX by a sho-nuff good fisherman, Bob McCoy. It was a matter of a French dip sandwich or the fish. Bith good, but because of a minor weight problem I chose fish. Truth be known I'd really liked to have had both of them, but you know, we now live imn a civilized society.
I was going out and run around some today but decided against it. Actually I was going junking. Going to buy some junk. And one of my favorite places to go in my little town is to the Salvation Army store. I go to look hoping I suppose to find that diamond in the rough. Maybe an upscale piece of clothing I couldn’t afford if new but here in the this junk store I can or a good cap. I look for cups. What kind of cups? I don’t know but I’ll know one when I see it. Which reminds, I have broken so many dishes this summer. I mean maybe a half a dozen cups, dropped them in the sink and break them into dozens of pieces. I could use a couple of good cups. By the way, I am trying to find a good wallet, not any ole wallet but a fine one like I have been carrying around for so long. Now I did buy two or three wallets from the Salvation Store. I thought they might work but they haven’t so I threw them in one of my junk drawers. When I turned seventeen my dad gave me a wallet. He bought it at a saddle shop in Amarillo, Texas. It was one piece of leather which folded up with slots to hold everything in place. It was good leather and the slots were perfectly cut so they could not work out. It was a beautiful wallet. I carried it with me when I went into military service, then overseas to Korea. Two hitches over there the wallet survived. It was with me during two winters when we had no place to get out of the weather when it dropped down below zero except the trenches. During wet and dry weather we were together. Two monsoon seasons we lived through, the wallet soaked for days on end. it held my stuff, what I was expected to carry and any military pay script. The wallet endured a year and half at Fort Lewis, Washington after we returned stateside. After discharge the wallet was with me during a variety of jobs till one day while riding in my hip pocket in a pair of shorts on the golf course and during the game doing a little betting, I pulled it out to grab a bill or two to pay off a debt I had incurred and dropped the wallet. I reached over and picked it up and said, “Sorry old buddy.” My three golfing partners laughed. One of them asked, “What’s that thing?” It was sweat soaked, had some wrinkles in the leather and did look much like I did when when feeling ill. When I got home I decided to retire the wallet. In dog years and maybe wallet years it was getting old. I cleaned it and carefully placed it in my sock drawer to stay until one day, years later, I decided that was foolish and threw it away. I started carrying everything I needed in my front pocket with a rubber band around it. One day a couple of years later my wife gave me a card holder. It too was fine leather and I used it for several years as a card file, until one day I obtained a rolodex. Remember those? I pitched the leather card holder in my sock drawer. I bought two or three wallets but didn’t like them. I tried for several months to find another like my old buddy I threw away. I attempted on two or three occasions to have leather shops make me one like that first good wallet. No dice. Then one morning I started to the gym. I stuck my wallet into my front pocket and it was bulky, made too large a bulge. So I took our my drivers license and a credit card and a few dollars I had, folded the money and got that credit card holder out of my sock drawer, put my stuff in the card file, stuck it in my front pocket and off I went. Now since that time I have sewed both edges of the leather to keep it from coming apart but does really need replacing. I’ve looked online for a replacement. Bought a couple but they were not right, too large or too small or something. So now and every once in a while I stop off at a junk store and I look for something that might replace something good but old that I carry. I’ve also checked antique shops, so far to no avail. I guess I’ve always been a junker. It seems to have been forever that I needed more than one drawer to hold my junk stuff. I used to look for old fountain pens and ink wells and good old mechanical pencils so I’m sure I’ve got a junkers heart. I guess what it is, I’m tired of spending money on things that don’t work out. Some things I’ve owned, little things, like a pocket knife, a wallet, a writing instruments had character or maybe they suited me. Sometime I go out junking because I’ve been in the house too long. I need to get out, to look at people, speak to some, see what working people are about, but know this, when I do I’ve always got my eye peeled, looking for something of yore, that’s useful. Thanks for listening to me. I was getting lonesome.
@Bill Boggs I have learned over my lifetime that it is easy, and often helpful and mentally satisfying to become sentimentally attached to some inanimate object. When my Mother died, she left very little behind; my sister who lived only about a mile from my Mother's apartment in Illinois (I was 2000 miles away), cleaned out the apartment before I got there for the funeral. She asked me what I might want to take back to Arizona with me, of my Mother's. All I could think of was this: I guess it represented to me all those years during childhood and young adulthood when I had seen her mending something, or sewing.......It represented to me my Mother as surely as would a photograph, which still causes pain to look at, but the little "finger-hat" does not. Frank
Sometimes it's therapeutic to share your thoughts and memories with people who don't live in your real life circle, so to speak. You find that people DO care and others, such as @Frank Sanoica can identify with your darker memories and you don't feel so alone. I can't think of anything worse than a bad childhood.
Some thoughts on the weather and other things. I think we’re going to be hearing more and more about the weather and about climate change. It might be because of the political climate. Is the weather changing ? Is the climate changing? Foot, I don’t know. Some democrats are going to says yes, for heaven’s sake, we need to save the planet. Others are skeptical. Don’t asked me. I don’t know. A s we used to sometimes say in the military, “that’s above my pay grade.” I’m sort of silly that way. I’ve always over used the phrase, “I don’t know.” So let me get on to something I do know and a few things I don’t. I bought a suit the other day. Now I know an old retired gentleman, that goes no where, does nothing of import, and quite frankly has no where to go, doesn’t need a bunch of useless clothes. My wife points out to me that people don’t dress up any more to go to church or to funerals. Business people are dressing more casual. Why would I want a suit. But the thing is I’m down to nothing, clothes wise. I no longer have a sport jacket that I’d care to ware. I ridded myself of the only suit or two I owned when I gained a bunch of weight and didn’t lose it in a few months. Same with sports jackets. Now here I am with nothing in my closet to wear if I had wanted or needed to look presentable. True my closet is full but its full of casual stuff. I’m up to my ears in casual. I’m sure she is right. She usually is. But one day when she had gone up to the city to the doctor, I went out looking. I made some men’s stores. Looked at sports coats and a few suits. If you find good material, I mean fine light weight wool of perhaps silk and wool, boy they cost a pretty penny. I’d see a good looking sports coat hanging on the rack, check out the material, nice light weight wool, but what a price. I mean seriously. A working man would have to be bring home some serious bucks to afford to dress in that manner. But you know what? Of course you don’t unless I tell you. Frankly, I miss some things about the working condition. Don’t get me wrong. I am enjoying retirement but there are some things I miss. I sorely miss putting on a lightly starched button down shirt in the mornings. I miss dressing up once in a while. Now I know ties are out of favor in certain parts of the country, maybe everywhere, but when I see a man dressed in shirt and tie, wearing a good looking jacket, it reminds me how it felt back in those days when I kept my nose to the grindstone, making few bucks each day. I bought a suit. I was looking for a good looking jacket but didn’t find one I could easily afford and justify. But I bought the suit. The sleeves didn’t quite fit as I wanted so I dropped it off at a taylor shop who have done work for me in the past. Truth is I may never wear this suit anywhere. I’m an old cougher and don’t get around like I used to. But then again I may get up some morning and say to the woman of the house, get your glad rags on woman, lets go out to breakfast and that will be the perfect occasion to wear a lightly starched white shirt and a good looking gray suit.
@Bill Boggs Sometimes, I miss working as well. I see people in the neighborhood heading for work in the morning while I'm just sitting here with no particular plans or destination. I make up odd things to do to so I still feel useful. I can now stretch a 1 hour job into an all day project.
Going to put a stop to my loose lip until I've got a handle on my weight. Maybe then I'll hve something to crow about. Until then I'll be over on the dark side. You stay here safe, in the light. Hakuna Matata as the warthog would say, and understand, there are no problems here.
I still have Mama's snuff box and her thimble. She used the thimble so much that there is a hole worn in it. She was an expert quilter. I still have quilts that she made for me, too.